Topics Ethics

Question Suppose that once a year, Alice donates $25,000 to a children's hospital, and that this sum allows them to hire a part-time employee to take care of the children. Bob, on the other hand, volunteers for twenty hours a week at an identical children's hospital, which saves them from having to hire a part-time employee that would cost them $25,000 a year. Some people might say that what Bob is doing is more ethically admirable than what Alice is doing, because Bob is dedicating time he can't get back, whereas Alice is "merely" throwing money at the hospital. Is Bob's behavior really more admirable than Alice's? If so, why? Why might we assume such a thing?

Accepted:
April 27, 2011

Comments

Great question(s). I wonder if we have simply different goods in play here rather than clear cut cases of greater and lesser goods. I wonder if there are at least four distinctions that may help us think through your question. I will do my best to dinstinguish a few of them, though in the end I suggest we may have to conclude that too many additional factors that are not specified in your case may cause us to alter our evaluation(s).

Your point about time is really important. Someone who dedicates time for the hospital will not get that back (as you observe), but it might also be the case that someone who is giving the money to the hospital (but not volunteering) earned the money and will not get that time back that she spent getting the money. Still, maybe we can distinguish between types of what might be called Temporal Dedications or simply (and with less jargon) different types of ddications of time. Other things being equal, I suppose we think the person that dedicates more time to a hospital gives more than someone who dedicates less, but then we would also need to take into account the quality of the commitment and also how the commitment of one person for a day a month might also represent her bringing to this task years and years of training.

The other distinction I believe you are on to has to do with the difference between mediated and unmediated goods. Bob seems to be doing a good that does not have the mediation of others, whereas Alice's gift seems mediated through employing another party. Especially when you use the words 'merely throwing money' I (at least) am drawn to see a good that Bob has and Alice lacks. And maybe that is quite right, though I think that even what seems like our most unmediated goods (Bob directly cares for Susan who is undergoing physcial therapy) his training is itself (in the broad sense) mediated or made possible by the contribution of others.

So, things are complicated. Your description of the cases would stongly incline us to think Bob has chosen the more noble cause, but other factors may shift the balance when one takes into account the source of Alice's money, the quality of time contributed, and then there are some complex issues involving mediated verus unmediated goods. Motivation also seems key: what if Bob is motivated soley by a desire to humiliate Alice, his ex-wife, whom he is trying to brand as an uncompassionate philanthropist (which is actually false) and the only reason Alice does not volunteer because she is handicapped?